Using more than three fonts is not a sign of talent; using more than three fonts is a sign of laziness and a sign that you simply own a “1,000 Great Fonts” disc. Using so many fonts doesn’t create more visual interest in a website or in a publication; it causes your eye to flit from font to font, never giving the eye a chance to take in what any of it says. A good designer allows the eye to rest and a rested eye can read, can appreciate.

Who knew there were a thousand great fonts?

(Disclosure: I have at hand, counting each variant and weight as one, 751 fonts. In practice, I may dig out twenty in a year’s time. On this page, I use, um, three.)

Obviously, something set me off. It was a professional organization’s newsletter. Completely assembled by an “experienced graphic designer”. Said designer does not even have their own website to display their handiwork or I’d send you there so you could point and giggle or shriek in horror. Said designer has another website, though, but I refuse to link to it since it’s so poorly designed (with all sorts of embedded players that start at the same time) it’ll crash even the hardiest of computers. It frightens me to think someone somewhere is paying such a person good money for work that has not evolved since 1985.

Of course, anyone can hang out his shingle as a “designer.” Then again, anyone who’s ever eaten in an Army mess knows to be suspicious of shingles.